


it's not worth winning if you can't win big

by jsnoopy



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Hockey, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 17:53:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20050126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsnoopy/pseuds/jsnoopy
Summary: “He’s amazing,” Jungwoo murmurs. “He doesn’t need you.”“Yeah,” Johnny says. “That’s pretty amazing.”





	it's not worth winning if you can't win big

**Author's Note:**

> i googled 'mighty ducks quotes' (see title) and then i had fun writing for a few hours 
> 
> (this is unedited)

Jungwoo misses the first time Taeil flies on their ice. No one understands the flop of Johnny’s stomach as his doubts about the smaller man vanish, no one else on the team needs the same sharp inhale of oxygen as he flashes past. If Johnny hadn’t grown up with the game, he wouldn’t be able to watch him at all, he’s that fast. The rest of the guys – he likes them, they’re  _ fine _ – but it’s possible that they just don’t care like he does.

Jungwoo misses practice for a physical therapy appointment. Staying off the ice for the doctor is never a good sign, and leaves Johnny’s stomach in hard knots all day, but for a moment, when he sees Taeil, he forgets that.

“He’s probably not that good,” Jungwoo says that night, laying on Johnny’s couch with one leg hooked over the armrest, the other crossed under his thigh. A tube sock full of rice balances on his knee to help his muscle aches, but it’s gone room temperature several minutes ago.

“You’ll see,” Johnny assures him.

He tries not to feel too smug when Jungwoo audibly swallows the next time they’re at the rink. His hands are covered by his giant goalie gloves, but if he had use of them Johnny knows they’d be all over him, gripping at his jersey and pulling at the cloth. Jungwoo emotes through touch, by physical action, bruising push and pull.

Instead, the man beside him stares, his gaze following Taeil with the awe Johnny ached for from their other teammates. None of them are as good as him, or Jungwoo.

Or, he supposes, Taeil.

Off the ice, Taeil is elusive.

When Johnny finds him, he’s standing in line at Johnny’s favorite café, the one only five minutes from the lecture hall he infrequently sets foot inside of.

His head tilts back as he scans the chalkboard menu hanging over the register. He keeps his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket. For a man of his height, Johnny might expect him to wear shoes with some lift, but his sneakers are flat.

Johnny towers over him when he steps behind him in line. “Decided yet?”

Taeil does a half-turn to look at him, gaze flickering over his face for a second before recognition hits him. “Not yet. Any recommendations?”

“Iced caramel latte, with soy,” Johnny says, because it’s what Jungwoo would say.

“Ah,” Taeil says.

He orders a black coffee, hot, and the latte, and Johnny holds the cold beverage in the autumn chill without complaint as Taeil lets him walk beside him on the way to class.

Outside, Johnny tries to match his steps to Taeil, who makes no effort to beat Johnny’s long strides.

Taeil has Johnny hold his coffee as he lights a cigarette, exhaling away from his direction. He appreciates it; his dad was a smoker, and he’d never been very fond of the smell.

“I didn’t know you were in this class,” Taeil mentions.

Johnny smiles sheepishly, and rubs the back of his neck with one cold, damp hand, icy from the latte he hasn’t taken one sip out of. “It’s easy to catch up. Jungwoo always gives me his notes.”

“The goalie,” Taeil says. It isn’t a question, but it is curiosity.

“He’s good,” Johnny says, because he is.

Taeil takes a few more puffs of his cigarette before stubbing it out to go inside. “I think I could get a few shots in.”

There are a few times, in the weeks that follow, when doubt creeps up Johnny’s throat, spreading bitter over his tongue, souring every inhale. Nerves like this aren’t common for a man like Johnny, whose self-assurance follows him in and out of the rink.

When he stops being a hockey star, he can run for president, that’s what Jungwoo says, and Johnny has never thought twice about it before – it or anything else.

The first time Johnny held Jungwoo’s hand, he didn’t bother to hide it under the table of the McDonalds at 3 AM. He just took it, rubbing his thumb over Jungwoo’s knuckles as one of their other teammates tried not to stare.

When they kissed, it was Johnny who initiated it. He stood outside Jungwoo’s dorm and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, and laughed when the grinning boy’s hair got caught in the staples on the bulletin board Johnny had pressed him up against.

Jungwoo’s always nervous, always moving, but when Johnny says it’ll be fine, he believes it, because Johnny does, too.

Johnny doesn’t know what to believe now, so he focuses on Jungwoo’s fingers pressing into his shoulder. He leans forward, bent in half. His head would be between his knees if he wasn’t too long for the seats on this bus, which is why he usually has a row to himself, but he’s been jumpy all day, so he didn’t argue when Jungwoo dropped into the seat beside him as they pulled away from campus.

Jungwoo massages Johnny’s shoulder, digging his fingers into his muscles hard. The pressure pulls Johnny out of the dark, allowing Taeil’s lowered voice and Jungwoo’s gentle tone to reach his ears.

“Why’s he nervous?” Taeil asks.

“His dad’s the coach of the other team.”

Taeil doesn’t reply -- it’s a weight big enough to cover all of them. Johnny wishes he could consider himself dramatic, but he’s the biggest and the strongest on their whole team. He’s good, better than the other defensemen, and if he’s benched because of this distraction, it’ll be bad for all of them.

It’s an uncomfortable trip to the other side of the state, but Jungwoo lets him lean into his side the whole way.

Johnny watches them while he laces up his skates. 

Jungwoo stands only an inch shorter than himself, so Taeil has to look up at him, too, when they stand in front of each other like this. 

Jungwoo’s helmet hangs from his fingers as he says something to Taeil that makes him crack a smile. The shorter man runs his fingers through his hair to collect it together in a tiny knot at the back of his head, the sides shaved down. Without something to fidget with, he rubs his fingers together like he’s itching for a cigarette.

It’s his first game with them. Johnny wishes it could be an easier one. Selfishly, he just wants to watch Taeil fly.

He gets his way, but not how he’d expected. 

Halfway through the third period, number 44 won’t get off Taeil’s ass. Johnny doesn’t think he has to worry about it -- Taeil’s still the fastest forward he’s ever seen. But he makes the wrong call. 

The crack of Taeil’s body as he’s thrown into the glass reverberates down Johnny’s spine from across the rink. 

This time, he forgets about his father’s eyes on him. This time, he doesn’t wait to see what happens next.

He gets a ten minute stay in the penalty box, knuckles and jaw throbbing from the swings doled out and received. There’s a dull ache in his side, but he’s cracked a rib before and it felt worse than this, so he can ignore it. 

He grips his stick with both hands as he catches his breath, eyes on the game, eyes on Taeil, eyes on his boyfriend easily blocking a goal, eyes on his teammates succeeding without him, because of him, it doesn’t matter. He can’t feel the heat of his father’s attention. Maybe he lost it, maybe it was all in his head. 

He just wants to fucking play.

Jungwoo hangs his arms around Johnny’s shoulders at the bar, his hands fisted in his collar. “You’re such a big guy. Big strong guy, huh?”

Johnny doesn’t have to remind him that they’re nearly the way size, because he knows Jungwoo is just making fun of him. He rolls his eyes, prying one of Jungwoo’s hands off before his boyfriend starts accidentally choking him.

“Did you start drinking without me?”

“How could you start a fight all the way across the ice?” Jungwoo asks, slapping his hand to Johnny’s chest. “You’re supposed to give me front row to you kicking ass.”

Johnny picks up his drink, finishing it in two easy swallows as Jungwoo leans in closer, his breath puffing over his ear.

“Wanna play knight all by yourself? What if I wanna play?”

Johnny’s eyes catch Taeil’s across the room. He’s sitting in a booth with a few of their teammates, freshly showered and looking much, much better than Johnny is himself. Maybe he didn’t need rescuing after all.

“Do you?” Johnny asks Jungwoo.

“He’s amazing,” Jungwoo murmurs. “He doesn’t need you.”

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “That’s pretty amazing.”

Jungwoo laughs as Johnny shrugs him off to buy another drink, and when he turns around to go back to the table he finds Jungwoo pressed against Taeil’s side in the other booth, squishing another forward helplessly against the wall. 

Taeil smiles at him in a way Johnny’s never seen directed at himself -- wide, encouraging. His lips curve into a teasing smirk as Jungwoo whispers in his ear, and Johnny watches his boyfriend’s wandering hands squeeze Taeil’s knee under the table. 

Johnny’s heart thuds heavily in his chest. Jungwoo comes back once he’s successful in eliciting a laugh from Taeil’s lips, and they leave together, alone.

Alone together doesn’t last for long.

Johnny’s just put on clean sweats and is holding his toothbrush when there’s a knock on their motel room door, and he goes to answer it before Jungwoo can even finish telling him to.

Taeil stands outside with an unlit cigarette hanging between his fingers. A backwards cap covers his hair, and he chews on one side of his chapped lower lip. His expression clears as soon as he registers Johnny looking down at him.

“Got a light?” 

Johnny didn’t bring a lighter since he didn’t bring any weed, but he holds the door open for him to enter.

“Taeil,” Jungwoo hums from where he sprawls on one of the Queen beds, “wanna watch a movie?”

Taeil crawls onto the bed in answer, sitting beside him. Johnny picks up the remote from where it lay on the dresser and tosses it their way. Jungwoo catches it with one hand.

Johnny goes to the bathroom to finish brushing his teeth and when he comes back, Taeil’s kissing Jungwoo, the remote lost somewhere between their legs. Jungwoo slides his hand up the back of Taeil’s neck and knocks his cap off his head with careless fingers.

It’s kind of a perfect scene. If Johnny were a different man he might take a photo and post it on Instagram so the world can see that he has a perfect life.

Instead, Johnny crosses to the bed and sits on the edge. He reaches out to touch Taeil’s shoulder, fingertips brushing over the back of Jungwoo’s hand.

Taeil sits up again, braced by his elbow pressed into the mattress on one side of Jungwoo’s head. He looks at Johnny with an impassive expression that isn’t softened by the way his hair is matted down on one side of his head from drying under his cap. 

“Wait,” Taeil says simply.

Jungwoo cackles breathlessly, his laughter released from deep in his chest. He meets Johnny’s eyes, smiling widely. “Bad dog. Down.”

Johnny just stares at them, which sends Jungwoo into another fit of laughter only quieted by Taeil’s mouth on his again.

The situation could be worse. All things considered, Johnny might be able to wait forever, if it means watching Jungwoo’s fingers drift over Taeil’s neck as the other man kisses him quiet. 

But Johnny’s palms burn with the need to have warm skin under them, to run his hands over the defined muscles of Taeil’s back and Jungwoo’s legs, to learn and relearn the contours of their bodies until he’s satisfied he knows everything.

Taeil takes pity on him eventually, moments after Johnny starts to wonder if he’s really being punished. He falls into him without a second thought, without a doubt.

Jungwoo cards his fingers through Johnny’s hair in the dark, twisting the strands between his thumb and forefinger and shaking them out again, rubbing his fingertips over Johnny’s scalp. His voice breaks the quiet filled only by their breathing in the way only Jungwoo knows how, gentle and forgiving. “Can we keep him?”

Johnny hums. It’s a thought. One that has, embarrassingly, been on his mind since the first time he saw Taeil skate. Only the best deserve the best. They’re the best. So is he. 

“I don’t know, I don’t think he’s housebroken,” Johnny murmurs.

Taeil’s elbow swings back into Johnny’ side, jabbing the sore spot where he’d been hit in his quest for blood.

“Go to sleep,” Taeil says, unsympathetic to Johnny’s groan. 

Jungwoo giggles, his hand falling from Johnny’s hair as Taeil tucks himself along the goalie’s body. In the dim light from the alarm clock, Johnny can see Taeil’s head resting on Jungwoo’s chest, his hair brushing under his chin. 

When Johnny can breathe again, he sneaks his arm around Taeil’s waist. “You’re forgetting I defended your honor?”

“Who asked you to?” Taeil mumbles into Jungwoo’s collarbone.

Johnny smiles, finally letting his eyes fall closed, hoping to drift off without getting worked up over his own thoughts again. Before he falls asleep, he feels warm lips press a soft kiss to his forehead. He doesn’t open his eyes to see who it is. It doesn’t matter.

**Author's Note:**

> please give some johnwooil thoughts!! i, for one, have a lot of thoughts


End file.
